Opera : A Blah ‘Boheme’ Ends the 30th Season in San Diego

Little Mimi, the poor seamstress with the heart of gold and voice of silver, gasped her last consumptive breath as her beloved muff dropped symbolically to the floor.

Her assembled buddies registered proper grief. Her high-strung, high-voiced lover repeatedly sobbed her name, fortissimo. The tragic chords came crashing down in the pit, the curtain fell slowly and the audience cheered.

It was business as usual for “La Boheme” Saturday night at the San Diego Opera. It also turned out to be doubly sentimental business. Puccini’s shameless tear-jerker had served as the inaugural vehicle for the company in 1965, and here it was, back for the sixth time, to close the 30th anniversary season.

After 99 years on the boards, this pat verismo exercise can still exert its share of stagy pathos. All it needs is an inspired cast of singing actors; a sensitive, possibly even imaginative, stage director; and a conductor who can protect the participants from drowning in all the goo.

On this potentially festive occasion, alas, San Diego came up with a rote exercise. Nothing went painfully wrong. Nothing went deliriously right. There wasn’t a wet eye in my skull.

The troubles began, surprisingly, in the pit. Edoardo Muller--Italian despite the half-German name--conducted with a slow and heavy hand. The drama dragged and sagged, oddly punctuated here and there by empty Luftpausen. The dynamic scheme tended toward roughness, the orchestral responses toward toughness.

Muller usually is a canny, persuasive maestro. He proved that just a few weeks ago with Verdi’s “Macbeth.” Perhaps Puccini isn’t his cup of espresso.

Lesley Koenig, the new stage director, contented herself with the customary move-’em-on/move-’em-off duties, and, apart from a traffic jam in Act Two, functioned efficiently.

Her job wasn’t made easy by John Conklin’s 5-year-old sets--stylistic jumbles that invoke false economy for a garret where the roof doesn’t fit, surrealism for a Cafe Momus defined by Art Nouveau posters in the wrong language, and picturesque realism for a customs-house tavern blanketed with romantic snowflakes. Martin Pakledinaz’ costumes, borrowed from Seattle, could be described as innocent-generic.

The cast was youthful and earnest. Everyone looked nice. Everyone sang reasonably well. No one broke any hearts.

Patricia Racette, who portrayed the seconda donna, Musetta, at the Met this season, graduated here to Mimi. She commands a healthy, lustrous soprano, and she traces the fragile cantilena with a smooth, healthy, even line. She smiles a pretty smile in the first act and dies a pretty death in the last. Not much happens, musically or emotionally, in between.

Richard Leech, her disappointing Rodolfo, commands the prerequisites of an ideal poet-hero. He conveys a pleasant aura of ardor and even turns a nifty pirouette at horseplay time. His lovely tenor--now perhaps more spinto than lirico --rises with plangent ease to the top C in “Che gelida manina.” No sissy transposition for him.

On this occasion, however, he sang just about everything in the same lazy, monochromatic mezzo-forte. He did reveal a hint of sensitivity at the beginning of “O Mimi, tu piu non torni,” but it was too little, too late.

Rosemary Musoleno, who has portrayed Mimi in Connecticut and Texas, was demoted here to Musetta. She chirped the waltz-song cutely while suffering, it seemed, from a terminal case of the flounces. Mark Oswald provided a sympathetic counterforce as a baby-faced light-toned Marcello.

Yanni Yannissis, the gentle Colline, sang his farewell to the overcoat as if it were a farewell to life itself. Jeff Mattsey introduced a competent Schaunard (has anyone ever seen an in competent Schaunard?). James Scott Sikon mugged his way through the twin cameos of landlord and sugar-daddy.

A blah “Boheme.”

*

Remaining performances at the Civic Theatre, 202 C St., San Diego Tuesday at 7 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. and May 3 at 7 p.m. Tickets $20 to $90 (standing room $11 available one hour before curtain). (619) 236-6510.